Some sea or beach glass colors are common and easily found, while other colors are extremely rare. Why?

A brief look at the history of sea glass explains this. Glass was first made possibly as early as 1730 BC in Asia.

Glass is made from silica (historically in the form of sand) and alkali
or soda ash (sodium carbonate), which can be extracted from the ashes
of many plants. These two ingredients were melted together to form early
glass.

This process, which makes soda-lime glass, is still the basic process used in making glass today.

What makes the different colors?

Clear (white), as we know, is made with soda-lime. Impurities in the sand used resulted in fairly-common pale green.

To produce colors the following minerals alone or combined with other minerals produce the following colors glass:

COLOR

PRIMARY
MINERAL

Bluish-green
(beer and wine bottles)

Iron

Amber,
yellow, and near black

Sulphur

Amethyst
and purple

Manganese

Red
and pink

Selenium

Ruby
and cranberry

Metallic
gold

Blue

Cobalt

White
(opaque)

Tin

Turquoise

Copper
oxide

Dark
red (opaque)

Pure
metallic copper

Blue,
violet, purple, and black

Nickel

Fourescent
yellow, green, and red

Uranium

Orange-red
to yellow

Silver

As you can see, some of the most beautiful colors involve not only much more
costly ingredients, but the process involved also may cost significantly
more to produce deep vibrant colors and so has generally only been used
for limited production.

Naturally, the rare exotic hues are the most vibrant
sea glass colors and also the most sought after by collectors for their
sea glass collections and sea glass jewelry and sea glass art.

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